Vito Fossella's Dread Ringer

Also attending Tuesday evening's event was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose own book, "Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters," is due out in July. Not that the two Democratic leaders would ever be competing, but Pelosi's book was at 141,765 yesterday on Amazon; Reid's was at 2,147. Pelosi's Amazon ranking, of course, will shoot up once her book is actually published.

Reid gave a very brief speech at the party, summing up his book by saying, "In America, if I can make it, anyone can."

The majority leader's book chronicles his rise from a hardscrabble childhood in the tiny mining town of Searchlight, not far from Las Vegas, where he coped with two alcoholic parents, his father's abuse of his mother and his father's suicide to become a lawyer who battled organized crime and, ultimately, assume the top post in the U.S. Senate.

And, of course, he writes about one of the more infamous stories of his youth: punching out his future father-in-law, who was trying to stand in the way of young Harry -- or "Pinky" as he was known as a child -- marrying his daughter.

Democrats in New Places

A day after Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour's GOP candidate lost a formerly safe Republican seat in a special election, his old lobbying firm threw a party officially welcoming its first Democratic strategist.

Earlier this year Michael Meehan-- a former top adviser to Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) -- launched a new PR wing of Barbour, Griffith, Rogers. BGR used to boast of its all-Republican roster, formerly led by now-Gov. Barbour.

Meehan welcomed hundreds of top Democratic lobbyists and staffers into the firm's ornate office on Pennsylvania Avenue. "I am heading-up the firm's efforts to build a bipartisan offering by recruiting more Democrats," Meehan wrote to his friends.

After Tuesday's election, BGR will need those new Democratic friends. Democrat Travis Childers won the special election in Mississippi's 1st Congressional District, defeating a Republican who had Barbour's full-throated backing.